MELISSA McCarthy has responded to a film reviewer who called her "tractor-sized" and a "female hippo" after seeing her film Identity Thief.

In an interview with The New York Times, McCarthy said her first reaction was "Really?" followed by "Why would someone OK that?"

In the February review by Rex Reed in the New York Observer he called her " a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious." His review sparked an uproar across the US.

"I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate," McCarthy told The New York Times. "I just thought, that’s someone who’s in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs."

McCarthy, 42, said if the comment had been made when she was 20 "it may have crushed me".

She says it is hard raising her daughters Vivian, 6, and Georgette, 3, at a time when the world is in “a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia.”

McCarthy said articles like Rex Reed's “just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, ‘That doesn’t reflect on me.’ ”

McCarthy was speaking on the promo trail of her new movie The Heat starring alongside Sandra Bullock. The UK poster for The Heat however has drawn attention to McCarthy again after she appeared thinner and airbrushed.

It appears to be McCarthy who is the one left laughing. Since the success of Bridesmaids in 2011, which grossed $US288 million ($303 million) worldwide and earned her an Oscar nomination, she can pretty much green-light a film based on her name alone.

Her role in Identity Thief was originally a male character but was rewritten in order to get her to sign on.

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